


Chatty Diners

by Jodi28



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Red & Green & Blue & Yellow | Pokemon Red Green Blue Yellow Versions
Genre: Autistic Red (Pokemon), Boyfriends, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV First Person, Selectively Mute Red (Pokemon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28837224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jodi28/pseuds/Jodi28
Summary: 'I would like to make sure you understand why it’s difficult for me to speak.'"Oh. Okay."After a recent near-death experience, Red forces Blue to talk (or at least write) about his feelings.
Relationships: Ookido Green | Blue Oak & Red, Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Red, Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	Chatty Diners

~~_ You should know that _ ~~

_~~It is important for you to realise~~ _

_ I would like to make sure you understand why it’s difficult for me to speak. _

“Oh. Okay.”

Red has been writing a sentence or two in his ring-bound notebook every day since I arrived back in Kanto. He scrunches his nose up whenever he opens it, so I can tell he’s been working on a letter. A wordy one. It can’t actually just be about why he doesn’t speak; I’ve known that for years. I was a dick about it as a kid, but by now I’ve gotten used to hearing a note slide under my hotel door before our championship battles (back when he still did those), or getting a scrunched up ball of paper thrown at my head when we cross paths on public transport. This most recent note was quietly slid across the table to me without preamble, like a hitman naming his price in a lazy film.

He flips to the back of the notebook, and tears out two whole sheets. His week’s work.

_ When we were at the waterfall _

Before I can even finish reading this first sentence, I have to brace myself. The waterfall in Kalos? That was months ago. I thought I’d gotten away with ignoring that. I take a loud sip of my strawberry milkshake. Red flicks his pencil at me (he knows me too well).

“Okay okay, I got it! I got it, I’m paying attention, I’m reading it.”

_ When we were at the waterfall I know I made things difficult for you.  _

_ I can’t react to things like a normal person. Don’t umm and ahh and try to make me feel better. It’s true. But I’m  _ _ not a robot _ _. I have feelings. Very strong feelings. I’m also  _ _ not fragile _ _. I’m not made of metal or glass.  _

_ I flinch from peoples’ hands because people are so careless with them. I can’t speak to them because I don’t trust how they’ll take my tone, or how well I’ve assembled my thoughts into sounds.  _

_ But I won’t break if I’m overwhelmed, just like you wouldn’t - there are just a few more things that can overwhelm me. That’s why I take care; of myself, and of my words, and of who can see both of those things. I have been this way since I was two. My mother has a diary somewhere with every word she’s ever heard me say. So I am not going to change. Or at least, I am not very likely to.  _

_ So - when you see my  _ _ behaviour towards you _ _ changing, it isn’t because I am somehow becoming ‘more comfortable’ with touch, or noise, but because I am feeling safer around you.  _ _ You, specifically _ _. The more time we spend together, the better I understand you. The better I understand you, the less scary I find your movements, your voice, your needs. I trust you. I promise I trust you. Even at the waterfall, I trusted you. But it had been a long day, and we were so lost, and it was all so much too much. Any other time, and I wouldn’t have ruined it.  _

_ I don’t want you to always be worried you’re going to upset me. You should be able to _

As I reach the end of this first page, Red’s palm slaps down on the table, splayed over the letter, preventing me from turning it. I let him pull it back. He puts it to one side, and pushes his burger carton over it to make sure I can’t somehow read the rest before he’s ready.

I shift in my seat, and sip at the milkshake, pretending to admire the tacky decor of the diner as he writes a quick addendum to his speech. In the open notebook I can see a scrawl of scratched-out drafts. Red likes to take his time over things. His pikachu jumps up onto the table, and nudges his hand for attention until he finishes his work.

A new little note.

_ Before you read any more, I have to check. When we meet, do you always wait for me to touch you first because: _

  1. _You don’t_ _want_ _to touch me?_
  2. _You don’t want me to panic?_



I pick up the pencil he threw at me, cross some things out, add a few words, and pass it back.

  1. ~~_You do not_ _want_ _to touch me?_~~
  2. _You don’t want me to_ _ ~~panic?~~ __feel out of control_



He tuts at the note, and stops petting his pikachu to sign at me with his hands; “ _ You _ _ don’t have to write.” _

I sign back; “ _ Neither do you.” _

_ “I have to write  _ _ this _ _. You don’t know sign language well enough.”  _

“Hey! _ I am…  _ Oh crap, how the hell would you sign ‘getting better’?”

He laughs. It’s the sort of whispering chuckle I do when I read something kind of funny, but there’s nobody else in the room. I can almost hear his voice, just for a moment. 

He considers me, and then the note. He taps the word  _ control _ , fresh from my hand.

_ “You do understand.” _

“Well. When we sort of, started becoming better friends - you know, when I started being less of an asshole - I uh… I looked into it. I told you this already. I finished that book I got, actually."

“ _ That was stupid.” _

“That’s your way of saying I did something nice, so thanks. I just… I don’t want to mess everything up. I mess a lot of stuff up. I already messed up us being friends like, twice, in the past couple years, by not getting what was up with you. So, uh. Yeah.” I slurp the milkshake again, thinking about how many times I just said ‘up’. I should have picked a quieter beverage. Like arsenic.

He considers me a little longer, this time. The milkshake fails to poison me, and the red pleather booth fails to swallow me whole. I know I’m blushing.

“Do I… ahmm… get to read the rest of the letter, now that’s cleared up?”

He puts his hand over the burger carton, biting his lip, then shakes his head. He crumples the second page of the letter into a ball, and throws it in the box with the remnants of lettuce and ketchup.

“ _ New information. Have to think.” _

“Cool.”

I am not cool, and have never been cool, but apparently Red now trusts me to at least act cool. Tapping my finger on my plastic cup lid, I don’t pretend to be looking at anything but him anymore. It takes about five seconds of eye contact for him to break away. He likes to look at his hands when he signs. We have that in common, but I think for different reasons.

“ _ You don’t not want to touch me?”  _ The double negative is hard for me to parse, but I think that’s what he’s saying, given the context.

“Correct. I don’t  not want to touch you.”

He nods. Thank goodness. 

“ _ So, you want to touch me?” _

I could kind of see where that was going, so I took a big gulp of frosty strawberry shake about halfway through, giving me a second before I say;

“… That is, uh, one interpretation, of the… inference”

“ _ Yes or no.” _

“Yes.”

“ _ You like when I hold your hand?” _

“Yes”

_ “You liked it when I kissed you?” _

“… Yes.”

He takes the first (uncrumpled) page of his letter, and reads through it. He looks at my note. He looks at me, but not my face; my hair, my wrists, my canvas jacket with patches on the elbows.

“ _ Are you my boyfriend?” _

I stop myself, and I think. I think about the waterfall; sliding down the slick rock into darkness, and flailing out for Red, and the terror of not reaching him. And the moment, just before I messed up again, when he grasped my arm, and pulled me close to him, and we gasped up out of the pool to safety. Just, holding him. I think about drying off in the hostel bathroom, to give him some time alone, and being ambushed in the corridor. It was the second time I’d heard him speak aloud, and he’d asked me if I felt okay. I think about train armrests and, slowly but surely, his elbow meeting mine. I think about him smiling out of awkwardness, and out of windows, and at me. I think of him in rain and sunlight and colour-co-ordinated pyjamas. His dumb post-it notes. His eyes.

And for once, I feel certain, and instead of saying my first, desperate, insecure, thought -  _ WELL, DO YOU WANT ME TO BE? _ \- for once I think as hard as he must, every second of every day, over what I’m about to say, and I come up with the answer to his question.

“Yes. I am.” 

_ “And I’m your boyfriend.”  _ As I open my mouth with a grin to say something along the lines of ‘duh’, he flicks his second pencil at me. “ _ I know that’s how it works. It wasn’t a question. _ ”

I’m Red’s boyfriend. He is my boyfriend. Of course he is. What else would we be? “You can’t throw pencils at me if we’re boyfriends.”

He snickers. “ _ Says who?” _

“Says me, your boyfriend. It’s in the rules.” I feel almost giddy, repeating the word. “Believe me, I’ve got plenty of boyfriending experience.”

That was supposed to make him laugh again. He used to get so annoyed with me for being such a well-known flirt. In the green room of tournaments and exposition battles he’d always roll his eyes and leave whenever excited new trainers came up to us. As he retrieves his stationary without a smile instead, it suddenly hits me why that may have got on his nerves.

“Wait, Red, how long have you liked me?”

He looks up from his backpack at his name, like a deer in headlights. He holds up three fingers.

“Three months? Oh, okay. I thought we had… It felt like a longer build-up… for me, at least.”

He pulls his cap lower down his face, then moves one fist over around the other.

“Three YEARS?”

“ _ Only a little, to start.” _

“But… why?”

We both look across the diner booth, for all our very mature conversation about how well we understand one another, like an alien creature has been transplanted in the other’s place. He stretches out his arms, and just sort of, gestures at the whole of me. I return the favour. He throws his hands in the air. I copy him. He gets out another pencil, and I surrender.

“Sure, fine," I shrug, "I guess it’s hard to explain these things. I mean, I have it on good authority that most people’s attraction to me is impossible to explain,”

“ _ No! Oh my God! It is not!”  _ He gets the full kit back out the backpack, and writes furiously.

_ You are thoughtful, and charming, and hard working, and kind! You weren’t always kind, but you were always trying to get better, one way or another. And do you know when I first noticed you paying attention to other people? When you worked out how to actually talk to me? When you stopped treating me like some wacky sidekick from your hometown, that you were just stuck with? When you secretly started reading books and then learning sign, even when we were barely friends, and though I never asked you to? Even though I never would? _

“ _ Three years ago?” _

“ _ Yes.” _

_ “I am scared that…”  _ I look critically at my hands, as I form the words. I’m sure I’m making mistakes. “ _ I am scared I am still like that. The bad person.” _

_ “You weren’t  _ _ bad _ _. You were young. You were less thoughtful.” _

_ “Yes, bad. Less thoughtful- I think is bad.”  _ I know my words are clumsy, but it feels only fair. _ “If I forget - at the waterfall - and I move first, I am too much, I am bad.”  _

_ “No. You weren’t. I wanted you to hold my hand. It was bad luck.”  _ He keeps signing after that, but he can see I don’t get it, and goes back to the paper.

_ I’d wanted you to hold my hand that whole trip. So of course, with our luck, it first happened in a life-threatening fall. That was why I panicked. Not to touch you, but to lose you. _

I swallow as I read the last sentence. I know all this, really. He’s been trying to make it clear since that evening in the hostel corridor, in one way or another. But I’ve been too scared to listen. 

He sighs, deflating, and turns a page.

_ I know we’re too grown up for something so small as holding a hand to matter. I’m sure you’re experienced enough for anything I can offer you now to barely register as a relationship. This must seem very childish, to you. _

My throat is completely dry, my milkshake is gone, and I do not trust myself with half the vocabulary I would need to sign. I hold out my hand for the notebook and pencil. As I take it, our fingers barely brush, and my pulse quickens.

_ Red. We could sit in this diner for a thousand years, and I would still not feel grown up enough for this.  _

I repeat back to him the signs I saw him do earlier; “ _ and, I’m your boyfriend.”  _

He’s focused on what I’m saying, and the brim of his cap obscures half his face, but when I’m done, he tips it back. I see his eyes. They’re brown. Not so striking. But if you watch closely, as the sun catches them, each iris looks flecked with gold.

He smiles, and, very softly, for the third time in my life, I hear his voice.

“Duh.”

**Author's Note:**

> Unearthed this from my drafts folder from years ago. I have a whole chronology written out for this ship, so maybe I should write some more lil snapshots like this. I don't know why I find it entertaining to imagine Red is actually a very introspective guy if you just give him 20 minutes to write out his feelings, but it's probably because I'm the same. My only regret is I didn't make Blue even more of a dumbass.
> 
> Also hello if you read a lot of fic for these characters, what is the fanon consensus on their names? It feels very goofy to call them Red and Blue unless I headcanon that at least one of those is a nickname.


End file.
